Pricing & billing

Self-host is free, forever. Hosted instances are free too — up to three per account, no credit card. Paid plans for higher limits are planned.

TL;DR

Self-host: free, forever. Run spl serve on your laptop or your own server. No subscription, no usage limits, no telemetry.
Hosted instance: free — up to three instances per account, no credit card required. Each is a fully-managed <label>.syncropel.app with TLS, edge ingress, and a persistent record store.
Paid plans: planned, for higher limits (more instances, more storage, always-on guarantees). The free tier doesn't require one and won't be pulled out from under you.
Managed inference (api.syncropic.com): optional, usage-billed. See api.syncropic.com for the per-model price list.

You can move freely between self-host and hosted using spl export / spl import — your data is portable by design.

What you pay for

Self-host (free)

You run spl serve on hardware you control. Syncropic gets no money, no telemetry, no inspection capability:

Records, threads, audit logs live in ~/.syncro/hub.db on your machine
Federation works peer-to-peer; no Syncropic-operated server in the path
Provider keys (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google) are yours; you bill those directly
Updates via curl https://get.syncropic.com/spl | sh — single binary
Open source — the spec, the runtime, and every SDK

Hosted (free — up to 3 instances)

Provision a <label>.syncropel.app instance by signing in at syncropel.com. What's included:

Included	Notes
Hosted instance running `spl serve`	Auto-restart on crash; rolling updates from upstream
`<label>.syncropel.app` URL with TLS	Wildcard cert managed for you
Persistent record store	Your records survive sleeps, restarts, and updates
Edge ingress with auth proxy	DDoS protection, geographic edge, HTTP/3
Up to three instances per account	A fourth provision is refused with a clear message — delete one and retry

How the free tier stays free:

Instances sleep when idle and wake automatically on the first request. Mid-wake visits see a brief "waking up" page that retries itself; you land in your workspace seconds later.
The three-instance cap bounds what any one account consumes.

No card, no trial countdown, no surprise conversion. If you delete an instance, its label returns to the reservation pool after a grace period.

Higher limits — more instances, more storage, always-on instances that never sleep — will be a paid plan. If you already hold a subscription from the earlier paid-first signup, it continues to cover your instances; lapsed subscriptions simply fall back to the free tier for new provisions. Billing questions: your account portal or support.

Managed inference (api.syncropic.com)

The managed inference gateway is optional and usage-billed at the prices listed on its page. Every call also emits a record on your th_audit_api_usage thread, so reconciliation is a record query. You can always bring your own provider keys instead — self-hosted and hosted instances both accept them.

Self-host ↔ hosted: moving between

spl export round-trips your data — both directions take the same path.

Self-host → hosted

You've been running spl serve on your laptop and want to move to a hosted instance:

# 1. Export your local instance
spl export --output ~/my-instance.tar.gz

# 2. Provision a hosted instance (gets you a fresh empty <label>.syncropel.app)

# 3. Import your data
SPL_INSTANCE_URL=https://<label>.syncropel.app \
  spl import ~/my-instance.tar.gz

Federation pairs need to be re-established post-import (different DID), but records, threads, and audit logs come along intact.

Hosted → self-host

You're moving off hosted (sovereignty preference, or you just want it on your own metal):

# 1. Export your hosted instance
SPL_INSTANCE_URL=https://<label>.syncropel.app \
  spl export --output ~/migrate.tar.gz

# 2. Install spl locally if you haven't
curl https://get.syncropic.com/spl | sh

# 3. Start a local instance and import
spl serve
spl import ~/migrate.tar.gz

# 4. Delete the hosted instance from your account page at your leisure

If you delete the hosted instance, its <label>.syncropel.app URL returns to the reservation pool after a grace period. Federation peers will need to re-pair against your new local DID.

Self-host vs. hosted: which fits

	Self-host (free)	Hosted (free)
Cost	Free + hardware	Free, up to 3 instances
Ops	Yours (updates, backups, TLS)	Ours
Always-on	Only when your machine is on	Sleeps when idle, wakes on request
URL	`localhost:9100` (or however you expose it)	`<label>.syncropel.app`
Provider keys	Yours (per-provider billing)	Yours OR via api.syncropic.com gateway
Backups	Manual (your snapshot procedure)	Operator-managed
Federation	Peer-to-peer	Same — federation is identical between modes
Auth	Tokens you mint	Same + your syncropel.com identity owns the instance
Best for	Sovereignty preference, your own hardware	Zero ops, work from any device, "just works" UX

Start wherever friction is lowest — moving later is one export away.